How to Heal Physical Pain, Disease, and Injury | Gestalt Psychology
How to Heal Physical Pain, Disease, and Injury.
The inner exploration process has the ability to heal more than psychological and emotional conditions. The same technique can be used to uncover and heal the underlying causes of so–called physical conditions. Twenty years ago, I would not have believed that it was possible to heal pain, disease, and injury with my mind. I believed that such conditions were purely physical and could only be cured by physical treatments – traditional interventions used by Western physicians, such as pills, shots, and surgery. I had an experience that helped changed my views dramatically.
"I thank god for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work, and my god."
Helen Keller.
Throughout my life, I had been plagued by a seemingly endless number of gynecological problems. I now recognize these ailments as symptoms of childhood sexual abuse, but at the time I thought they were “just physical.” A gynecologist had found two large cysts, one on each of my ovaries; one he described as the size of a Florida grapefruit and the other the size of ripe tomato. He told me that ovarian cysts usually disappear by themselves, but when they grew as large as mine they were beyond the point of shrinking on their own and required surgery.
Having already undergone a couple of gynecological operations, I was reluctant to be cut up again and told my doctor I wanted to wait a few weeks to see if the cysts would shrink. He insisted that I return in three weeks and that if the cysts were still there, he would schedule the surgery.
I was terrified. At that time, I knew nothing about using mind power to heal, but I had heard somewhere that self–hypnosis could be used to shrink tumors. I purchased a paperback book on self–hypnosis and followed the instructions for relaxing. I learned that self–hypnosis is a natural state of relaxed concentration we all experience for fifteen or twenty minutes every two hours when we are awake. We have diurnal (or daytime) cycles that correspond to our nocturnal sleep cycles. We have fifteen or twenty minutes of rapid eye movement (REM) every two hours at night when we dream and process daily events and anxieties. We have similar cycles during the day when our minds may wander, we may want to rest or stretch, and we may feel hungry. Psychologist Ernest Rossi, PhD wrote a fascinating book called The 20-minute Break about how we can use these periods to reduce stress, maximize performance, and improve health.
Milton Erickson, M.D., the acknowledged father of modern hypnotherapy, used these natural twenty–minute periods to help clients recover memories without hypnotizing them. He found that when people are relaxed and focused, they are able to obtain more information from their minds than when they are engaged in worry and constant activity. Contrary to the prevalent myths about hypnosis, hypnotized people remain alert and in control of their minds and bodies; no one can control them. I was relieved to find that I could come out of the state of relaxation any time I wanted and that I would not become a zombie as I had feared.
Although I did not really believe self – hypnosis would work, I spent fifteen or twenty minutes twice a day relaxing and mentally visualizing the cysts on my ovaries growing smaller. At the same, I repeated in my mind, “My cysts are becoming smaller and smaller and disappearing. “ I didn’t feel anything changing but continued out of desperation.
